I agree with the point of his post — including his disagreement with the idea that it’s Obama’s fault if he can’t get fake-moderate Republican Senators he has no discernible leverage over to vote against the filibuster — but I think John is being too charitable here:

McCain, being all mavericky, has flip-flopped so many times I have no damned clue which way he will vote.

There’s a better chance that the Mariners and Pirates will meet in the World Series this year than McCain voting against a filibuster of DADT. Apart from a brief period in which he was very mad at George W. Bush for denying him the presidential nomination to which he was entitled, he’s been an absolutely standard-issue Republican hack, and this issue certainly won’t be an exception.

I agree with Cole’s point in this instance. That said, I can’t recall the last time he thought anything was Obama’s fault, but people who read Balloon Juice more regularly than I will doubtless think of something.

He criticizes Obama frequently on matters like civil liberties. He just doesn’t have any patience with a very common set of attitudes among the online left – namely, assign no blame for problems to Republicans, all blame to Obama, and assume that Obama’s motives are bad.

The criticisms I used to read on civil liberties, which did appear regularly, seemed weak tea in comparison to the outbursts directed at liberals who for one reason or another opposed Obama strongly on something. I didn’t always agree with those liberals but I thought the vitriol was excessive and so I stopped going to the site.

I agree with Cole’s point in this instance. That said, I can’t recall the last time he thought anything was Obama’s fault, but people who read Balloon Juice more regularly than I will doubtless think of something.

I criticize him all the time. I’m just hard-pressed to see how spending all my time flailing at the imperfect President is worthwhile when there is an obviously insane party out there doing horrible things on a minute by minute basis and paying no political price because the members of my party have decided that self-criticism is the highest and most important act of political involvement. Triage, people. Triage.

What flip-flopping? McCain has said a lot of things over the years. That’s why the press loves him–they can count on him for a good sound bite. But when voting time rolls around on the Senate floor, somehow John McCain always votes for the hard-line social conservative position.

When I learned that he had a 100% approval rating from Focus on the Family, I realized I could ignore anything he said. That was back in the late nineties.

McCain has said a lot of things over the years. That’s why the press loves him–they can count on him for a good sound bite. But when voting time rolls around on the Senate floor, somehow John McCain always votes for the hard-line social conservative position.

Right. And what’s hilarious is that it never seems to dawn on the Weisbergs and Finemans that he might be telling them what they want to hear.

Well, he *could* stop DADT for the near future with an executive order, but that wouldn’t be pragmatic/gradual/bipartisan/insert-other-ridiculous-buzzword-here enough, so suck it, gay soldiers.

And he might, you know, actually go to the Hill and meet with someone like Voinovich, see if he can change his mind. He convinced Pelosi to agree to vote on his Social Security deficit reducion commitee’s recommendations, after all.

But who knows? Maybe “I didn’t think I could win, so I didn’t even try” will go over better with voters. It sure has so far.

Put it this way- its quite literally the exact thing a lot of people on the left excoriated Bush for doing- its in effect a President out right overruling a seperate branch and stating- “laws only count when I say they count”

Um…the military is part of the executive branch. The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, he’s not butting into any other branch of the government.

As to the wisdom of doing so, I feel like its (or should be mentioned) that some researchers at, I think UC Santa Barbara, did a study not too long ago showing exactly how Obama could use his actual, legit, no comparisons to Bush power as CinC of the armed forces to stop DADT from being implemented.

its quite literally the exact thing a lot of people on the left excoriated Bush for doing- its in effect a President out right [sic] overruling a seperate [sic] branch and stating- “laws only count when I say they count”

I do not think the word “literal” means what you seem to think it means.

That’s ridiculous. What I and others are saying is it would be nice if Obama would do what he could, rather than simply stand there with his shoulders shrugged and say “I didn’t do anything because I don’t like confrontation” followed by a slam at his base for being dissatisfied.

But maybe I should criticize Republicans. If you think they are more open to influence than my own party, that is. And if you think that. . .